


A Beginning, Of Sorts

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Relationship origin, escorting, fade-to-black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Filling an old Tumblr prompt, in which Rush worked as an escort to put himself through college. Nicholas Rush first meets Gloria when she hires him to escort her to a fancy party one night...Rated M - fade-to-black, but adult themes.





	A Beginning, Of Sorts

Nick sighs, pushes his glasses down his nose to be able to rub the bridge, and readjusts them before looking again at the paperwork spread out in front of him, trying to make sense of it all.

PhD’s are fucking hard work. He loves maths, he loves physics, he honestly does, but right now there are numbers swimming in front of his eyes and he really doesn’t think that he’s going to get anything vaguely useful out of it tonight. With a grunt of pain from the ache in his neck, he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, wondering whether to get some more coffee and try and plough on with it, or give it up as a bad job. He’s worked twice this week already so he thinks that he’s allowed to be knackered.

The phone, shrill and urgent and unrelenting, bursts into angry life and Nick rolls his shoulders before going to answer it. There’s only one person who’d be calling this number at this time, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to answer. Maybe he should let it go to answerphone and he’ll pick it up in the morning when he’s less tired. Maybe he should just pretend to be out, but unfortunately he’s not exactly known for being a social butterfly. Pushing these other welcome notions aside, he grabs the receiver.

“Rush.”

_“Hey Nick, it’s Liz.”_

He knew that it was going to be Liz. She sounds even more tired than he does. Liz isn’t her real name, he knows that much, but he’s never pried into what her name actually is.

“Hi Liz.”

_“Diary says you’re available Saturday night, is that still the case?”_

Nick looks down at his paperwork. Of course he’s available Saturday night, it’s not like he has a hot date with anyone except these equations, and they’re not exactly the best company. True, they’re quiet and they share all his own interests, as far as theoretical physics is concerned, but they don’t really make small talk and you can’t really wine and dine a sheaf of papers. On the other hand… He rolls his neck again, feeling the catch. He’s just so damned tired at the moment.

Still, any work is good work, and even scholarship students need to eat and sleep.

“Yeah, I’m still available.”

_“Great. I’ve got a job for you.”_

“When, where, who.” He doesn’t really waste on small talk with Liz. She’s calling to give him an appointment, and anything else in their interaction is somewhat awkward.

_“Saturday night at seven-thirty, a young lady by the name of Gloria Miller. She wants to meet you at the Palace Hotel bar for a chat but then you’ll be going elsewhere, she wants an escort to a fancy family party out of town. Play at being the boyfriend, you know.”_

Nick raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t usually get escorting jobs that involve actual escorting. He’s really not the most social person in the world, and he’s _really_ not the most social person on Liz’s books. Sex he can do – very well even if he does say so himself. Interacting with other people… Not so great.

“Are you sure I’m the right person for this one?” he asks.

_“Well, the only other guy I have available on Saturday is Danny and he’s even more of a no-go for social events than you are. Besides, she sounded nervous and he’d send her running for the hills.”_

Nick has to give a snort at that. Danny caters for rather more specialised tastes.

_“I can trust you with this one, can’t I? I think she just needs someone to prop her up for an evening in the face of disapproving relatives. Just be polite and attentive and keep her drink topped up, and neatly deflect any questions about when the two of you are getting married and having kids.”_

“Yeah, ok.” Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. He wonders why Miss Miller has felt the need to hire company for the evening, but decides that it’s really none of his business and he’s not paid to think about those kind of things. “I’ll be there. Dress code?”

_“Smart, but not super formal. Suit and tie.”_

Nick wrinkles his nose. He hates wearing ties and tries to get away without one as much as humanly possible. He only ever wears them when he’s working and even then, if he can go without he will. Unfortunately, Liz can read his silence.

_“You’re wearing a damn tie, Rush.”_

“All right, all right. Saturday, half-seven at the Palace. How long?”

_“She’s paid up till midnight, thinks the party will be breaking up by then.”_ There’s a long pause at the other end of the line. _“I know I don’t have to tell you this but take condoms and lube just in case. You never know.”_

“Of course, Liz.”

_“Payment like usual. Have fun.”_

“Thanks, Liz.”

They say their goodbyes and Nick puts down the phone, staring at it for a few minutes before getting up and padding through to the kitchenette to make a fresh mug of coffee. If he’s sacrificing Saturday night to the tune of getting paid, he’ll need to keep working on these equations tonight.

X

The Palace Hotel isn’t the most expensive place his client could have chosen, but it’s certainly not the cheapest, and he wonders how old she is and how she came to be blowing her savings on hiring an escort and buying ridiculously priced cocktails in this bar. Nick readjusts his tie and takes a good look around the room, eyeing up the possible clients. He picks her out straight away. She’s sitting at the bar with a Margarita that she’s not drinking, and she meets his eyes as soon as he walks in. She’s the only one here alone, and Nick takes a moment to study her from afar before he goes over.

She’s fairly young, mid-twenties at most; his own age. That’ll make selling the fake relationship a bit easier. Long legs and soft curves encased in a classy, well-fitting little black dress. Honey-blonde hair pinned up, and pale skin. She’s very pretty, and Nick wonders again why she needs an escort for the evening.

Still, nothing to be gained by staring at her from the doorway, so he goes over.

“Miss Miller?”

She nods. “Please, call me Gloria. You must be Hamish. Thanks for coming.”

Nick admits that Hamish probably isn’t the best professional alias he could have chosen for himself, but since he’s so obviously Scottish, as Liz reminds him frequently, he thought that the best thing to do would be to play up that Scottishness. As long as none of his clients ask him to wear a kilt because he doesn’t actually own one and the last time he wore one, he was told that he looked terrible in it. When he first started in the job he had a terrible fear of being asked to wear a kilt and nothing else, because romantic fiction and ridiculous novel covers have a lot to answer for when it comes to the unnecessary objectification of Scotsmen.

“My pleasure,” he replies. He really hates parties. He hates most social occasions in general, but since this pays the bills and is earning him his PhD, he’s going to have to give in with good grace and be on his best behaviour during this one. Unless, of course, Gloria wants him to play at being an absolute arse in order to get her family off her back, the objective being that after him they’ll be happy with whoever she ends up with. Some of the more experienced escorts have had that kind of a job before, with clients who aren’t out to their parents. On the other hand, that might well backfire and lead to the awkward situation of her being put under even more pressure to replace the highly inappropriate ‘boyfriend’ and take up with someone better.

“Can I get you a drink?” Gloria asks.

Nick shakes his head. He doesn’t like drinking too much when he’s working because he likes to be fully alert and aware of his surroundings, and although he’s not been to all that many swanky parties in his time, he knows that there’s likely to be a lot of alcohol once they get there.

“Did the woman at the agency tell you what I wanted?” Gloria continues. “About the party, I mean.”

“She told me that there was going to be a party, but she didn’t give me any details.”

“It’s my grandparents,” Gloria elucidates. “They live about seven miles out of the city. They have a big pre-Christmas party every year, loads of family, friends, influential business people.” Her voice hardens on the last few words. “And every year so far since I moved out, I’ve turned up without a date, and my grandmother tries to set me up with any number of godawful would-be suitors, as if I only exist to be married off and continue the family line, and…” She breaks off. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all this.”

Nick just shrugs. “You can say whatever you like, it makes no difference to me. I’m here for you, not any of your relations.”

“At any rate, this year I was determined not to turn up on my own and that’s where you come in.” She pauses. “I wanted to meet you here before so we could work out a reasonable cover story. I’m doing my Education Masters at the university, we met there.”

Nick nods. “Yes, that’s easy enough.” He wonders if their paths have ever crossed before. “What was your Bachelor?”

“Music. I play the violin; my aim is to get into an orchestra. Teaching’s a backup in case that dream falls through. You? I don’t mean in real life, obviously.”

“PhD,” Nick replies. “Which is technically the truth. You can pick the subject. Just nothing involving foreign languages, or I’ll be fucked,” he adds.

There’s a lot less nervousness in Gloria’s features now, and as she smiles, taking a sip of her margarita, her face lights up.

“Maths,” she says eventually. “You look like the mathematical sort.” She cocks her head on one side and smiles. “Am I even close to being right?”

Nick quirks an eyebrow. “That would be telling. Anything else I need to know?”

“My grandpa made his money in antiques, my dad carried on from him, and all the women in my family are professional wives.” She snorts. “They really want me to settle down, so there’ll probably be a bunch of questions about when we’re going to get married and how many kids we’ll have. If I can say one thing for my family, they’re very… eager.”

Nick just laughs. He thinks he’s going to get on with Gloria. They’re more alike than he thought would be possible, considering their vastly disparate backgrounds, but despite her obvious privilege, she seems grounded enough. He’s met enough of the other sort during the course of his ‘career’. Burning Daddy’s money away and coasting along through their classes.

“We should probably get going,” Gloria says, draining the last of her drink. “They’ll be expecting us soon.” She pauses. “I think you should know, before we go, that a bit of me is just doing this to spite my dad. He gave me a ‘dress allowance’ and told me to go and get ‘something pretty for the party’. So I did.” She pauses. “Sorry, that’s horribly insensitive.”

Nick shrugs. “It’s true, in the most brutal sense of the word.” Her frankness is refreshing, and so is her apology.

“Yes, but it’s still not a very nice thing for me to have said.”

“We’ll say no more about it. I’m flattered that you think I’m pretty.”

“Oh, you’re very pretty.” She slips her arm through his and they leave the hotel bar; there’s a taxi waiting. The drive to her grandparents’ house is quiet and awkward, but Nick’s sure that once they’re there, the uncomfortable atmosphere will dissipate a little as it will no longer be just the two of them. He’s going to be completely out of his depth, of course, but that’s par for the course, and as the newcomer to the family, no-one’s going to expect him to be the life and soul of the party in a hurry. At least, he really hopes not. As they pull up to the drive, Gloria begins to speak again and with the taxi idling outside the door, they work out a few last minute details so that they don’t end up giving all the relatives two subtly different versions of the same story. They don’t need to know everything about each other, this fake relationship doesn’t have to have been going on very long. There’s no need to fake true love and wedding bells on the horizon, just enough of a familiarity not to be suspicious. Although, Nick thinks as they walk in through the front door and he sees the vast amounts of alcohol around the place, he doesn’t think that anyone’s going to be in a position to call attention to anything suspicious any time soon.

“I’ll try and keep you close as much as possible,” Gloria says. “It would be unfair to leave you to be mobbed by all my relatives.”

She introduces him to everyone in short order, and Nick knows that he hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of remembering any names, so he just decides to be the arm candy that he was hired to be, keeping his mouth shut as much as possible and listening politely to all the conversations going on that he really doesn’t understand. People are talking about investments and banking on one side and probing Gloria for information about her future plans on the other side, and Nick can quite see why she needed an ally for the evening. It must be incredibly daunting for anyone to come here alone and be met with such a barrage of information and questioning from well-meaning family members who don’t really mean all that well. The main person that he has to fend off is Gloria’s grandmother, who seems to have taken quite a shine to him. Then again, from what Gloria’s told him, she would probably take a shine to any man that Gloria turned up with for the simple reason that he has the ability to get her granddaughter pregnant and produce some great-grandchildren.

“I’ve tried telling her at least sixty times that I don’t want kids, at least not until I’m thirty,” she mutters once they finally manage to extricate themselves from Grandma Miller’s grasp and are hiding out of the way of everyone behind the grandfather clock in the hall. Gloria’s on her third glass of champagne already and she knocks back the dregs. “I really hate these things. But I’m very glad you’re here.”

“I haven’t exactly done much,” Nick points out. “I’m just quiet and respectable boyfriend Hamish.”

“I know, but you exist tangibly which is the main thing, and I can always talk to you and block out everyone else. And I can complain about all my relatives to you and you won’t be offended.”

Nick laughs. “No, although you might be if I share my opinions of some of them to you. It’s all right when you’re complaining about your own family but it’s a different thing if it’s someone else doing it. It’s a bit like Scotland, I suppose. We all make disparaging remarks about various bits of our culture but as soon as someone south of the border makes those same comments, well…”

Gloria smiles. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She glances back towards the living room where most of the party is gathered, and she sags in her high heels a little. “Do we have to go back in?”

Nick shrugs. “It’s your party and your time,” he reminds her. “I’ll just go along with whatever you do.”

Gloria looks at him sideways, twirling the stem of her champagne flute between her fingers.

“You don’t like these events, do you?”

“Honestly? No. I’m not usually first choice for this kind of thing. But I’m here.”

“Yeah, we’re both here and we’re both miserable. Come on, let’s hide. We’re both consenting adults and apparently in love, I don’t think anyone’s going to come looking for us.”

Gloria grabs his hand and leads him up the stairs; from some of the noises coming from behind closed doors, they’re not the only ones who have decided to leave the party and get up to no good. Although, Nick reasons, he doesn’t know what this particular little excursion with Gloria is going to lead to. She takes him into a small bedroom, a little bleak and sparse, no personal touches in it.

“It’s my room when I stay over,” she explains, opening the window to let some cool night air in and sitting on the windowsill, rummaging around in her little clutch bag and taking out cigarettes and a fancy lighter. “Do you mind?”

Nick shakes his head. “Not at all. I brought my own.”

Gloria laughs and pats the windowsill across from her, offering her lighter, and Nick takes it. The first drag is just what he needs after the tension in the party downstairs.

“Your name’s not really Hamish, is it?” Gloria asks presently.

“No. But I’d rather not tell you what it really is.”

“Fair enough.”

This moment here, sitting smoking in a room lit only by moonlight, is the most comfortable and relaxed that Nick’s been with Gloria all evening, and the silence that settles between them isn’t awkward like it had been before. There’s an unspoken understanding between them; he’s not really sure where it came from but it’s there and it’s nice. It’ll make the rest of the time go easily.

Gloria finishes her cigarette and leans back in the window, looking out over the vast garden beyond, and occasionally glancing back at him, her head on one side, considering him. Nick raises an eyebrow.

“What’s up?”

“I’m wondering whether it would be bad form to kiss you,” Gloria says frankly, and whilst Nick wasn’t sure what he was expecting, he’s fairly certain it wasn’t that. “Because you’re not at all how I was expecting and you’re very handsome, and I’d like to kiss you.”

Nick certainly wouldn’t mind if she kissed him. She’s certainly very lovely and his feelings towards her are positive, rather than the usual neutrality he tends to maintain with clients. He likes her.

“I’d be up for that,” he admits.

“I’m glad.”

She’s firm in her kiss, she knows what she wants, and she tastes of smoke and alcohol like so many women do. She smells expensive, like so many women do. But she’s different somehow. There’s a realness to her, which is ironic considering that the entire time he’s been with her he’s been playing a role. But there’s no pretence to her now, not like the bright, smiling, perfect daughter she had been downstairs. He likes her, it’s as simple as that, and that makes this experience so much more enjoyable for all the many, many times he has done it.

So he keeps kissing her, and she keeps kissing him back, and there’s a champagne brightness in her eyes when she pulls away, a brightness that Nick recognises all too well. It’s a good job that Liz warned him to bring condoms just in case.

X

“We should probably get back to the party.”

They’re sitting in Gloria’s four-foot single bed, Nick at the head and Gloria leaning against the wall, propped up on pillows, the ashtray on the covers between them. He doesn’t really have any desire to move, and he knows that whatever time they get back to the party, people are going to be giving them looks that immediately say that they know what they got up to whilst they were absent, but Nick really couldn’t care less about that, and to all intents and purposes, Gloria doesn’t seem to care too much about it either. But the clock is ticking down, and soon he’ll have to leave because her payment will have run out.

“Aye, we probably should.”

It’s with obvious reluctance that Gloria gets out of the bed and puts her clothes back on without self-consciousness and Nick follows her lead. Once they get back down into the main party room, it’s clear that a lot of the guests have already left. They get the usual looks, a mixture of disapproval from some of the elderly relatives and indulgent ‘they’re hot-blooded young things’ sentiment from the others. Gloria’s mother chastises her for skipping out on so much of the party and Nick listens to her deflect the veiled barbs in a wonderful display of passive aggression that he couldn’t have bettered himself. Finally, she manages to get him out of the door and into a taxi that’ll take him back to the Palace.

“Thank you,” she says as they part. “For everything. I’ve had fun tonight. Well, the bits when we weren’t at the party were fun. And the party was less awful than usual. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The taxi slides quietly into the night, and Nick glances back over his shoulder through the rear window at Gloria standing in the driveway, and he wonders if he’ll ever bump into her again.

X

It’s a new year and a new term and a couple of months have passed with Nick trying very much not to think about Gloria when he sees her suddenly, and suddenly, everything changes and he has no idea what to do with himself because he’s walking in one direction with his coffee and she’s walking in the other direction with her violin case and it’s inevitable that they’re going to meet in the middle of the street. She recognises him just before they collide with each other and smiles.

“Hello. How are you?”

Nick’s still somewhat stunned but manages to answer.

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“I’m good. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”

No-one would know that they were talking about an escorting appointment, but either way, it’s clear that they remember each other and they have been thinking about each other in the interim. Nick’s not the best at small talk, something that Liz has despaired of in the past, but they chat for a couple of minutes.

“Do you maybe want to get a coffee later?” she asks presently.

“I…” He really doesn’t know what to say to that because he does want to, but at the same time… “You know what I do in my spare time,” he warns her.

Gloria nods. “I do. It’s how we met, remember.” She shrugs. “It’s just coffee.”

Just coffee. He can do just coffee. God, he spends so much of his working life around the opposite sex that one would think that he’d know what to say to them when he meets one he knows in the street. He nods.

“All right then. That sounds good. Tuesday night?”

“Great. Although there’s one thing. I know you’re not called Hamish, but can I maybe get your actual name before we meet again?”

Nick gives a snort of laughter. “It’s Nick.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nick. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

It’s a beginning of something, Nick’s pretty sure of that as they continue down the road on their separate ways. It’s a pretty strange beginning, and he’s not sure what it’s the beginning of yet, but it’s definitely a beginning.


End file.
